Yes, but not the mouse they ate yesterday. They probably eat mice all the time. The increased protein and plenty of clean water is what makes big eggs.

I have old pots of plants that are in the greenhouse with the chickens. Every 2-3 days they get heavily watered and the mice come flying out only to be greeted by 12 Phoenix, 4 pheasants and 2 Seramas. They rarely miss any.

The Pheasants will go after the wood rats that the neighbor has living in his 24'x 24' wood shed. Every once in a while one will wander up the drain tube into the greenhouse and we find a partly eaten carcass laying around occasionally.

Several of my coworkers are also very squeamish about fresh eggs if they put too much thought into it. Working nights, we tend to have discussions that possibly wouldn't occur during the day, LOL. Comments like: "The rooster does WHAT to the hens??!" If I told them the chickens ate an occasional mouse I'm afraid they would swoon. Unfortunately I had told one gal that hens, like humans, are born with a certain number of eggs for their lifetime. For some reason this got her all grossed out! Lori

Hell I was squeemish about eating my chicken eggs at first too. When we first started getting eggs I told my fiance to eat the eggs. I wanted to see if he would get sick. Nothing happened. Then we started making scrambled eggs with half fresh half store eggs. FINALLY I got to the point where I wolf them down. LOL

oldpea I was being facetious but really I think that if I saw my chicken eating a mouse it might gross me out too although come to think of it that was on my list of "pros" to raising chickens. Catching and eating chickens and snakes.

They eat snakes too, eh? I hope they don't eat a lot of my garder snakes. I like them. They eat mice and bugs in the garden, too and I have a lot of big ones that like the straw mulch in the veggie garden.